Transdisciplinarity and Digital Humanities: Lessons Learned from Developing Text-Mining Tools for Textual Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, with the emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and other social and political factors, national and international research funding councils have increasingly emphasised that research in the humanities should engage with data-intensive and evidence based academic activities, as those in natural sciences and engineering do. As stated in the description of the cross-nation and cross-discipline ‘Digging into Data Challenge’ programme,1 a call for ‘data-driven inquiry’ or ‘cyber scholarship’ has emerged as a result of hoping to inspire innovative research methods, to transform the nature of social scientific enquiry, and to create new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on problems of common interest.2